The present invention relates to a multiple station tooling machine for manufacturing drill bits and other spirally grooved workpieces.
DE 30 47 599 A1 discloses a method and apparatus for disposing a hard metal plate to the head of a spirally threaded drill bit. The apparatus comprises a guide element which is iteratively movable to various work stations, the guide element having receiving recesses in which the spirally threaded drill bits are disposable in vertical orientations, a height adjustable support for receiving the shaft ends of the drill bits supported on the guide element, a retaining element for yieldably engaging the shaft of a supported drill bit, a turning element which is operable to engage a slot of the drill bit head in predetermined angular positions and to counter the drill bit engagement operation of the retaining element and which is stoppable at predetermined angular positions, a classification drum for oriented feeding of hard metal plates along a feed rail, an insertion element for inserting into the slot on the drill bit head a hard metal plate which is disposed in a feed ready disposition on a feed component of the feed rail, and an optional brazing station, whereby there is arranged the disposition of a constant axis, prismatic retaining chuck or three lug chuck and a notch element oriented for iteratively engaging the radially inner edge of the drill bit, preferably on both sides.
The apparatus disclosed in DE 30 47 599 A1 permits the execution of an operation for disposing a hard metal plate in a slot on the head of a spirally threaded drill bit which involves disposing the slot region of the vertically supported drill bit at a constant height, yieldably engaging the shaft of the supported drill bit, orienting the slot of the drill bit at a predetermined angular disposition, setting the hard metal plate into the slot relative to an extension thereof at the head of the spirally threaded drill bit, and, optionally, securing the hard metal plate in its disposition in the slot by means of a brazing mixture, whereby the drill bit is retained, independent of the magnitude of its diameter, in a vertical position and, following the disposition of the hard metal plate into the slot of the drill bit head at the radial inner edge of the slot, can be grooved by an element firmly disposed against the hard metal plate in the slot.
The creation of the spiral groove in a spiral threaded drill bit, the grinding or cutting of the tip of the drill bit including the creation of the pointed peak thereof, the creation of the back cut surfaces on the drill bit tips and the drill bit surfaces cannot be carried out by the just described known apparatus.
The apparatus of the present invention improves on the state of the art and relates to a multiple station tooling machine for finished production, in large numbers, of work pieces of the type having spiral grooves such as, for example, spiral threaded drill bits, whereby the multiple station tooling machine can carry out at various stations thereof different production steps such as grinding or cutting of the spiral grooves and grinding or cutting of the tips of the drill bits, as well as the placement and removal of the workpieces relative to the machine.
Prior art tooling machines operate principally with horizontally arranged workpieces. As such, these tooling machines have relatively large space requirements and the accessibility thereto to perform tool exchanges for tools such as grinding or cutting discs, workpiece engaging chucks, guide bushings, centering tips and the like is limited and time consuming.